My Journey To Becoming A Happy Vibrant Woman @ 70

• Dr. IFY NWAKWESI Reveals How She Survived Depression

One evening in November 1987, about 8:00pm, my husband and I were driving to Anthony Village. I believe we must have been going to visit his brother late Nnamdi Nwakwesi and his wife Hazel.

I suddenly felt some hot sensation on my right thigh and I recall asking my husband whether the air-conditioner was blowing hot air.

He checked and said it was not.”

This hot sensation persisted and I felt it from one part of my body to the other.

This was the beginning of an ill-health I had to deal with for well over six years of my life.

Within a week, so many other symptoms appeared.

I started experiencing anxiety symptoms and noticed I was ·becoming very moody.

Sometimes I would have panic attacks and the most frightening experience was the sudden feeling that I would die if nobody was around me.

I would break out in sweat; my breathing would be fast and shallow and I would run out of the room in fright looking for someone to talk to.

I observed I was easily fatigued.

In church or at events I was not able to stand without feeling that I would fall or loose balance.

For me to be able to stand, I would have to hold on to somebody or the pew.

I also noticed, that after eating I would feel bloated and I had problem of too much gas, and constipation.

The most dramatic aspect of the ill-health was the panic attack.

The frequency was increasing and I decided to consult a medical doctor.

After few consultations, he made a diagnosis of anxiety neurosis with reactive depression.

He put me on some drugs which included inderal and diazepam.

I had some relief but had some uncomfortable side effects from the drugs. The most significant was dryness of mouth which I found very irritating.

In spite of the drugs, I still had very serious panic attacks and I had to be admitted to the hospital.

I had to be given some intravenous injection to calm me down.

I spent about one week in hospital which I found very boring. I am a very bad patient and I hated losing my freedom.

I got better and was discharged but my health problems continued.

In fact after two weeks of being discharged, most of the symptoms re-appeared in greater intensity in spite of the fact that I was still taking the medications.

Someone introduced me to some Chinese herbs, which I took for a while and still did not recover.

In spite of my ill-health, I still managed to continue with my business.

The interesting phenomenon is that people would often tell me that I was looking good but I knew that I was battling with an imbalance in myself which was making me very unhappy and less productive.

My husband Maduka was very worried about my state of health and he advised that I discontinue business as he was of the opinion that my ill-health may be due to stress.

I did not and I continued to go to work. Despite my ill-health I was still excited about my business challenges and overcoming these challenges gave me a lot of satisfaction.

On one of my days at work, I was feeling particularly weak and my anxiety attack was more dramatic.

One would have expected that someone in that situation would just go home and rest in bed. I did not, I continued with my work and suddenly I felt dizzy, and had severe palpitations, that is my heart beating faster than normal and louder.

I could hear my heart beat and then suddenly I heard myself say – oh – I am dying oh – I am very weak Maduka, God help me…. and passed out.

When I opened my eyes, I was Iying in a hospital bed – at First Consultant Medical Centre.

I was told that I arrived the hospital with a feeble pulse rate and at a point, they could not get any pulse rate.

The doctors worked hard to resuscitate me and I responded.

I thank God for the opportunity I was given for recovery.

We all know and hear about people I who died during that sort of attack.

I was discharged two days after admission. I am not too sure that I any further investigations were carried out to determine the cause of my collapse. I believe it was attributed to stress.

That may have been the cause but I may also have suffered from a transient Ischamic attack.

In all of these experiences, I continued to look up to my God for healing.

As I said earlier on, I was brought up in a Christian family and I have a strong sense of the spirit of God re-siding in me.

I was attending church regularly initially at Our Saviours Anglican Church.

One of my sisters had joined a Pentecostal Church and she convinced me that my healing would be faster

if I attended some of the Pentecostal Services.

I went from one Pentecostal Church to another looking for a miracle of instant healing.

The constant prayers helped me to cope better with my hea Ith problems but to be frank the symptoms and signs did not miraculously disappear.

As the symptoms continued, I decided to return to my orthodox Anglican church.

My ill-health continued and I was beginning to really get frustrated.

I was so unhappy l did not have the energy and enthusiasm to carry on with my business activities. any longer.

Everything became a chore and my productivity diminished. Since I was getting easily irritated, my staff was finding it difficult to cope with my frequent criticisms, my family was

also not left out.

They had to deal with a depressed, irritable mother and wife and they did not quite understand what was wrong.

It was not a case of a definite disease, not asthma, not diabetes, not liver disease, not any of the disease they know about.

They were all simply confused and did not know how to help some thing they could not understand.

My husband and mum were very worried and insisted I travel abroad for medical treatment.

I first travelled to Germany and after extensive tests, nothing abnormal was detected (NAD).

I returned to Nigeria with some relief knowing that I was not about to die but the symptoms and signs persisted.

I cannot now remember who introduced me to Dr. Rodney Adeniyi Jones, a well-known orthodox practitioner in UK. I travelled to UK to consult him. Rodney is a brilliant integrative medical Doctor and his compassion for his patient is almost palpable.

He spent quite some time taking my history and he carried out full blood work-up and also carried out some other tests not normally done in orthodox medicine.

These tests are not necessarily looking for a disease state.

They are structured to detect metabolic dysfunctions in the body which may not have reached the stage of actual disease.

Most of the orthodox tests were normal except that I had elevated SGOT & SGPT – indicative of some liver dysfunctions.

He also tested my body for toxic substances and he found out that even though I did not drink alcohol – my body had a high level of acet-aldehyde and some other toxic substances which are by-products of yeast and fungus.

These substances are very toxic and can damage the cells of any organ and lead to different types of unpleasant symptoms.

He explained to me that I was not digesting my food properly which was more of starchy food, meat than salads and greens.

This undigested food attracted organisms like yeast, bacteria, fungus which normally reside in the body of every human being.

These organisms after feeding on the undigested food, then release into the blood these toxins which lead to free radical damage and chronic inflammation. These are some of the root causes of the unpleasant symptoms I was having.

In my toxic state, I was also not absorbing the. nutrients my body needed for good health. This was responsible for my low energy and frequent irritability. He recommended diet modification, lifestyles  changes, some vitamins and herbs.

To be frank for the first time I saw a window of opportunity for my recovery.

I returned to Lagos with a lot of hope and enthusiasm and began practising all that Rodney has taught me and took my prescribed vitamins and natural herbs religiously.

A friend of mine also advised me to  consult Prof. Adeoye Lambo who was already combining orthodox clinical practice with some effective and scientifically proven alternative methods. I consulted Prof, Adeoye Lambo and he introduced me to an acupuncturist Dr. Alphonsus Ekwerike who treated me with about twenty-five acupuncture sessions.

This treatment resulted in a great relief of my anxiety attacks and also helped to improve the depressive tendency.

Prof. Adeoye Lambo told me that most of my problems were stress- related and gave me a book – “BE STRESS WISE” to read on stress.

The stress awareness that I acquired contributed immensely to my improvement.

With all of these modalities of treatment I was definitely on my way to recovery.

My health continued to improve.

To be frank all my symptoms did not disappear but it was much easier for me to cope with my health situation as I now had more precise information on my problem.

The fear of death, cancer, one chronic disease or the other had disappeared.

All of these experiences exposed me to the other world of medicine, the alternative health care world and even though I was trained as an orthodox medical doctor, I started expanding my knowledge gradually and developed the desire to explore the other modalities of health care.

The more I read books on Alternative Health Care the more I became convinced that the approach to medicine which focuses primarily on curative medicine, ignoring other aspects of Natural Health Care and Preventive Medicine had to change.

I set up Healthy Living Services in 1991 to provide these other health approaches to Nigerians and I am convinced that this was the real purpose for my ill-health.

God was preparing me for this job by giving me the experience first hand so that when I am counselling and managing a patient, I can easily identify and understand their problem because I have been through all that.

Many people today are not necessarily sick as to lie down in bed but so many move around, go to work with myriads of health challenges.

They know it, they feel it. Sometimes people around them notice. Some

other times they don’t. The individuals know they have a problem. They may have consulted one Doctor or another, many tests may have

been carried out and the Doctors may find some abnormal results or nothing.

These people may have been given drugs. They may experience some relief but usually they do not completely recover.

Their doctors may change from one drug to another without any improvement in their symptoms.

As I continued to battle with my health problem, I became exposed to different modalities of health care, some of which were very

instrumental to my recovery.

I believe that I became experienced in these different modalities through divine intervention both to facilitate my recovery and for the benefit of my fellow. I have included these modalities and other profound information in my E-book: Achieve Vibrant Health Through Integrative Lifestyle.

I acquired the knowledge through reading health books and attending trainings abroad.

God helped me to use the knowledge on a consistent basis and today, my health has been turned around. My productivity and energy have increased.

My enthusiasm for life is much greater and I give God the Glory for the miracle of integrative lifestyle.